


instagram is not a place for smart people

by birdcagereligion (ckasjfbfksbj)



Category: From Dusk Till Dawn: The Series
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - No Culebras (From Dusk Till Dawn), Animal Death, Child Death, F/M, Gen, Mental Health Issues, Non-Canonical Character Death, One-Sided Attraction, Out of Character, Recreational Drug Use, Teen Angst, Underage Smoking, but only because of the age difference, fight club spoilers, wow these tags are a lot
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-22
Updated: 2020-06-22
Packaged: 2021-03-03 19:00:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,770
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24520477
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ckasjfbfksbj/pseuds/birdcagereligion
Summary: we're justas screwed upand braveand falseand loyaland wrongand rightas anyone else
Relationships: (one sided), Kate Fuller & Scott Fuller, Kate Fuller & Seth Gecko, Richard Gecko & Seth Gecko, Richard Gecko/Original Female Character(s)
Comments: 3
Kudos: 9





	1. index

**Author's Note:**

> the summary is a quote from the rest of us just live here by patrick ness, so all rights belong to him etc

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> we share out craziness,  
> our neuroses,  
> our little bit of screwed-up-ness  
> that comes from our family.  
> we share it.  
> and it feels like love.

[Richie (17, Junior):](https://thewizardofloneliness.tumblr.com/post/619789798493798400/part-one-of-the-modern-day-fdtd-high-school-au)

[Seth (16, Sophmore):](https://thewizardofloneliness.tumblr.com/post/619792483052912640/part-two-of-the-modern-day-fdtd-high-school-au)

[Tanner (19, Senior):](https://thewizardofloneliness.tumblr.com/post/619849006497071104/part-four-of-the-modern-day-fdtd-high-school-au)

[Scott (15, Freshman):](https://thewizardofloneliness.tumblr.com/post/619852805172297728/part-five-of-the-modern-day-fdtd-high-school-au)

[Kate (15 & 1/2, Freshman):](https://thewizardofloneliness.tumblr.com/post/619857858253684736/part-six-of-the-modern-day-fdtd-high-school-au)

[(oc) Brooke (17, Junior)](https://thewizardofloneliness.tumblr.com/post/619798201347784704/part-three-of-the-modern-day-fdtd-high-school-au)

**tba:**

Kisa (18, Senior)

Carlos (20, College Sophmore)

Vanessa (16, Sophmore)

(oc) Ben (17, Junior)

etc


	2. do you feel held by him? (kate)

A week before summer break, Kate’s fifth-grade class took a field trip to the Richland Chambers Reservoir to release the frogs they had spent the semester raising as a group science project. While the teacher and Kate’s own mother attempted to wrangle a rowdy group of pre-teens, a boy fell into the water without anyone noticing.

No one knew how long he had been there before Scott spotted him floating facedown in the dark, murky water, but one thing was clear to all of them. He was never ever going to get back up again.

The boy’s name was Andrew and he had been Kate’s first real encounter with death. Until that moment it had always just been something that happened to other people, that was whispered about but never truly spoken out loud.

What little she did know about death at that point had come from the horrible movies that Scott watched when their parents weren’t home where men would shoot and stab and beat each other and the small snippets she overheard through the door of her Daddy’s office when parishioners would show up crying on their porch in the middle of the night.

But that day, as Kate watched her mother drag Andrew ashore and she saw what was left of him up close and personal, Kate learned that death was two things. It was permanent and it was inevitable. She wasn’t quite sure which scared her more.

The next day at school, her Daddy came and talked to everyone. Said that sometimes bad things happen to good people and it wasn’t anyone’s fault. In the end, God just wanted Andrew to come home a little early is all. Kate wanted to ask him why God would want that, and why He would want all of them to see Him take Andrew but she knew better than to question her Daddy, let alone God.

School was let out a week early and in the excitement it wasn’t long before Andrew was completely forgotten by everyone it seemed, except for her.

Every night that summer Kate had the same horrible dream. She was back at the reservoir on that terrible day except that this time it was her in the water. Her body was frozen, her lungs full of icy cold water, her limbs rigid straight. No matter how hard she struggled, she couldn’t move, couldn’t scream, though she still felt it all. Even as they pulled her waterlogged body from the lake, she still felt everything. Her mother’s hands on her skin, her tears on her skin.

God never came for her in the dream. Even as they lowered her soggy corpse into the ground, He never made an appearance.

When she woke up she could still smell the graveyard dirt, still taste the lake water, no matter how hard she prayed it wouldn’t go away.

Once, and only once, she tried asking her Daddy about it. Pastor Jacob Fuller gave her a long hard look and told her that it was just a test of faith, that it was just the first among many and to pass all she had to do was believe in Him. So she did.

But still, death seemed to follow her after that. To her it felt like death was a hungry animal who liked to toy with his prey and it had caught onto her scent that day.

A few days after her thirteenth birthday the family dog, Abel, got into the trash and ate what was left of her chocolate cake and died on the living room floor. She cried for a week and refuses to have cake on her birthday.

Then, a few months after that her grandmother passed away in her sleep while visiting them over the holidays. Kate found her in the morning, stiff and cold in her bed. She looked the same and that was the worst part about it. Her grandmother was still there, or at least her body was, but whatever actually made up her grandmother wasn’t. It was like something had snuck into her room at night and sucked out her soul with a straw, leaving her hollow and cold and so unbearably  _ empty.  _ She never set foot in that room again.

Kate prayed so much over the years that she could recite her Psalms backward if need be. Sometimes she did, to see if it made a difference.

It didn’t.

After a time, she learned one more truth about death. That once you had seen it, once you had looked into its twisted face, you would never be able to escape it. It wasn’t that death was following her, death had always been there. She just hadn’t been able to see it. But now she did, and it scared her.

Just as she started coming to terms with the third truth, death came for her once more.

Kate thought she understood grief before, how it felt like a heavy blanket you couldn’t get off and tasted like ash on the back of your tongue, but she was wrong. All she knew know was that she knew nothing.

When her mother died, it made all other things lose their color. It made her miss that ash taste because at least then she would be able to taste something. And while she struggled to learn how to live her new half-life, her Daddy lost his own test of faith.

He quit his job, packed them and whatever he could fit into the RV and drove like a bat out of hell for some town in Kansas where he had an old friend who had a fresh start ready and waiting for them.

“Kate you know now that Dad’s not a pastor anymore you don’t need to ride the bible so hard.” Scott, a textbook example of an annoying little brother if ever she’s seen one, comes barreling out of the tiny RV bathroom, pulling Kate’s attention away from her phone. “You’re gonna get destroyed in a real city if you go around quoting Psalms on Instagram.” He scoffs, dropping next to her on the small couch. Kate rolls her eyes and pushes away from him, wrinkling her nose at the smell wafting out of the now empty bathroom. Scott laughs, waving a hand in front of his face. “Oh, and by the way, you’re gonna want to light a match or something before we all get gassed out. Pretty sure that what I did in there is considered biological terrorism.”

“You’re disgusting.” Kate sighs, slipping her phone into her pocket as she pushes herself to her feet. In the bathroom, she opens the vent, slamming the door shut behind her when she’s finished. “I can’t believe mom and dad walked halfway across China to get you.”

Scott sticks his tongue out at her and throws his feet up on the couch where she had been sitting. “I might be gross but at least I’m not a total bitch.”

“Scott! That is no way to talk to your sister!” Her Dad’s voice echoes through the RV, startling them both. Kate turns toward him but he doesn’t look away from the road. “Apologize, right now.” He says, voice hard and cold like it had been all day.

“Sorry...” Scott mutters, his brow furrowing as he crosses his arms and leans further back in his seat. Kate returns to her phone, a small smile crossing her face when she notices a new message from Jessica. Lightning fast, Kate begins typing.

-

Kate watches through the dusty rear window of the RV as they cross the town line, knowing full well that it didn’t actually mean they were there yet. Her dad had told them earlier that they had to drive a little out of town to his friend’s place to get the keys to the new house.  _ Shouldn’t be more than an extra half hour at most,  _ he’d assured them. Kate doesn’t know if she believes him but after almost eleven hours already on the clock it didn’t really matter.

As the RV rolls to a stop and starts to slowly turn onto what is bound to be yet another long straight road, Kate notices something moving toward them. As it grows closer she can just barely make it out.

A tall, thin boy with chin-length brown hair who looks to be a few years older than her pedals furiously toward the RV on the back of a bike much too small for him. Red light reflects off of his thick, dark-framed glasses as he gets closer.

Clutching onto the back of his jacket there are two other kids around his age on skateboards. To his left is a tall, pale girl with long, fiery red hair that flows out behind her as the boy gains speed. To his right is another boy, much shorter than either of the other two, with warm tanned skin and dark hair. Even with the distance between them, Kate can make out the wide grin across the second boys face as they close in on the RV when it slows again.

The two skateboarders let go of the boy on the bike, sailing past him and grabbing onto the back of the RV. Over the sound of the engine, Kate can just barely make out the sound of the two shouting at each other gleefully.

Eventually, the RV rolls to a full stop and the engine cuts off. From outside of the bedroom Kate hears footsteps shuffling across the floor and the door open and close. For a brief moment, she thinks about following her Dad out of the RV and meeting this friend her dad refused to talk about, but she quickly decides against it. There would be plenty of time for that later. Right now she just wants to curl up on the floor of their new house and sleep until noon the next day, so instead of following her dad, she turns back, resuming her vigil out of the back window.

Through the dirty glass, the smaller boy is watching her. He catches her eye and something in his gaze makes her mouth go dry. His eyes are a dark stormy brown and his skin is whipped red from the wind, and while hes stupid cute, which Kate balks at as soon as the thought crosses her mind, theres also something hard and dark about him that makes her skin crawl in a way that she wasn’t used to.

Slowly, she raises her hand and waves at him. He doesn’t wave back but he does blink which she appreciates. 

Without looking away, he reaches down and slowly pulls up the front of his shirt, the edge of his underwear clearly visible underneath the edge of his jeans. Kate can’t bring herself to look away, even as her face starts to burn. He raises an eyebrow at her, the hand not holding his shirt up reaching towards his side.

Almost like they have a mind of their own, her eyes follow his hand, her heart beating furiously in her chest as they do. Finally, his hand settles on a glass bottle she hadn’t noticed before that he had slipped into the band of his briefs.

Kate breaks her gaze away and looks at his face, scowling at him. He laughs at her, the sound as mean as he looks, popping the cap effortlessly off of the bottle with his thumb and shooting her a wink.

The taller boy appears out of thin air, skidding to a stop on his bike next to the boy who had just been teasing her. Bike boy gestures at the bottle in skater boys hands, his brow furrowed in question. Skater boy gestures towards his groin, laughing again as he takes a sip from his underwear beer. Bike boy pulls his arm back and backs away from the other one, his nose scrunched up in disgust. The redheaded girl from before comes into view, playfully shoving bike boy as she moves past him. She stops next to skater boy, pulling the bottle from his hands, tilting her head back and Bike boy throws his hands up in the air and turns around, walking away from the other two who just laugh and pass the bottle between them.

The RV roars to life underneath her and quickly pulls away from the strange kids. Pretty soon, they’re nothing but two dark specks in the distance, growing smaller and smaller as the RV moves toward its final destination. She knows that shes going to see them again at some point. Atchison was a relatively small town all things considered, bigger than Bethel but there was still only one school. Hopefully by then both her and skater boy would forget each other.

Her skin still crawling, Kate settles back into the bed, pulling out her phone to check her socials for goodbye messages, trying futiley to forget about that boy.


	3. bottom is a rock (richie)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Dude, what the hell happened to your face?”
> 
> “Would you believe me if I said ‘an extremely localized tornado’?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> unbeta'd as usual, so any mistakes are my own

Overall, Atchison is a nice city even if its boring as all hell if you don’t care about Amelia Earhart or Lewis and Clark, but that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t have its fair share of assholes. Benny and Pete Bottom are the first that come to his mind. Their dad owns the only liquor store in all of Lancaster, the small group of houses that can barely be called a town just a dozen or so minutes away from Atchison itself, which is more popular than any of the churches. They think it makes them untouchable, which it sort of does. Thing is, if you piss off Papa Bottom you’re gonna have to shell out some serious cash at the shady bar on Main St or drive all the way to the city for a real drink and not many people are willing to do that without a damn good reason. So the Bottom boys get to wreak a reasonable amount of havoc as long as they keep it within the town limits.

Benny’s the ringleader. Big, mean, and dumber than a sack of bricks. He’s been held back for the past few years so while he’s nearing twenty-one, he’s still attending school with the rest of them. Pete’s a couple of years younger, having just started his junior year with Richie and Brooke the month before. He’s a little soft and if you manage to get him alone he’s no threat at all, but if his brother is around all bets are off.

Together they’ve been making Richie and Seth’s lives hell for as long as either of them can remember. They’re everything that Eddie is worried Richie and Seth might become. Stupid, mean, and complacent to name just a few. Which is why he tries so hard with his weekly gentleman lessons. Eddie says that if they’re going to go into the business he’s going to make sure they do it right, that he would rather die than see them end up like one of these bottom-feeders or even worse, their father. And Richie knows he means it. That’s one of the things he loves most about the old man, how hard he’s fought to give them any chance they have at a better life.

Brooke drags the sleeve of her flannel underneath his nose, gently wiping away the blood that continues to trickle out despite the nearly ten minutes since he’d taken the blow to the face that started it, pulling him from his thoughts.

“Benny’s really crossed the line this time,” Brooke spits out, tilting his head to the side as she continues to use the edge of her sleeve to wipe the blood and dirt off of his face, assessing his injuries as she does. Sheepishly, Richie chances a glance up at her through his eyelashes, his vision blurry without his now broken glasses. Her face is nearly as red as her hair, her brow furrowed and her lips bitten almost bloody. There’s a large bruise forming on her cheek, a few small cuts scattered across the quickly reddening skin. Her hair is filthy, dusty and tangled with twigs and god knows what else. He’s not surprised by the state of her, having earlier watched her chase off the Bottoms using her guitar as a weapon, even saw her wack Benny a few times with it before she dragged him to his feet and started assessing the damage. As he watches, she continues to worry her bottom lip between her teeth, biting into the flesh hard enough that the skin turns white when she finds yet another scrape on his face. “I swear I’m going to kill that motherfucker- _”_

“As chuffed as I am that you’re willing to defend my honor, killing people you know is a sure-fire way to get caught,” He grabs the hand that she keeps using to fuss at his wounds, holding it tightly in his own between them, stilling her frantic movements. He understands why she's so angry, he knows that he should probably feel the same way but right now the only thing he really feels is tired and maybe a little cold. “And we’re both way too young to have to settle for conjugal visits so I would appreciate it if you could let this go. For now at least.”

“You’d still date me even if I was a lifer?” Brooke laughs softly, holding their still clasped hands over her heart, smiling down at him. “I always knew you were a romantic deep down.” He opens his mouth to say that wasn’t exactly how he meant it but before he can get the words out she drops his hand and raises her own, carefully cradling his face in her long, cool fingers as she stares down at him, her expression suddenly serious. “Richie,” Brooke swipes one of her thumbs underneath his nose again, wiping away what is hopefully the last thin trickle of blood. He’d always had a habit of bleeding a bit too much for a bit too long, especially when it was as dry as it was today. “We can’t let him get away with what he did to your pretty face. It's not right.”

_ Not just my face.  _ He almost says, stopping himself at the last moment. She’s already worried enough, she doesn’t need to know about the sharp pain in his side. If anything, knowing would just make her do something stupid like last time. He’d deal with it later, probably with Eddie’s help if it ends up being serious. Either way, he’s had worse before. “I knew that you only liked me because I’m hot.”

“Sometimes there are other reasons, but not often.” Richie frowns at her but his heart isn’t in it, and neither is hers, the insult half baked at best. He knows that she can do better, he expects her to do better. Instead of replying, he wraps his arms around her waist and pulls her closer to him, pressing the side of his face against her stomach in an attempt to warm himself up a bit. She laughs quietly and behind the soft rush of her blood moving through her veins he can hear it echo inside of her.

Brooke starts to card her fingers through his hair, which has gotten much too long for his taste in the past few months. He’s been meaning to get it cut, but then there are moments like this, when she’ll scrape her nails across his scalp and brush her fingers through his hair and a small part of him thinks that the annoyance is worth it, if only she’ll keep paying this much attention to him. So for now, he keeps letting it grow out.

“Wanna get out of here?” Brooke says after a while, her tone much softer than before, breaking the silence between them. ”I got this new piece from Aiden that I’ve been dying to use. We can get stoned and drive around while we wait for Eddie to pass out.”

Richie hums, pulling back and looking up at her. She’s calmer now, the air around her less heavy. As she pulls back from him a bit, the last bit of anger slipping from her face, he feels his own surface just enough to let him know that its there. He knows how this goes. It will either sit underneath his skin, patiently waiting for it’s moment to surface or it will explode out of him at the next chance it gets. He hopes its the former, but there's no telling really. “As long as it’s not the same stuff from last time. I was high for days.”

“That’s Burt’s Banshee Shit for you. He swears that it’s from hell but I think he’s just talking about California.” Brooke pulls a pack of smokes out of her back pocket and flips it open to show him at least an eighth hiding inside. It looks different from the last batch, the flower a bright green instead of a deep purple, and much less intimidating. “This is more mellow, supposed to taste fruity too. Can’t remember the name.”

In the truck, Richie packs the bowl while Brooke starts the engine, driving them in the direction of who the fuck cares as fast as the old beast will go. He passes her the freshly loaded bong as she turns onto one of the few roads leading out of town, still marveling at the craftsmanship of the piece that she had pulled out of the huge bag she tries to call a purse. Its made out of a thick, sturdy, dark green glass in the shape of a long, winding snake. Tanner might be a piece of work, but at least he has good taste.

Brooke takes it from him quickly, using her knees to steer as she pours water from her hydro flask down the neck. As soon as she deems it full she tosses the bottle onto the floor at his feet, pulling a lighter out of her shirt and passing the flame over the weed in one swift move. If it was his first time watching her do it, he would be freaking out, but it was far from it. Honestly, it was impressive in a way, if stupid. 

Richie takes the piece from her, pulling from the neck as quickly as he can before the weed stops burning. The smoke fills his mouth, and he thinks  _ she wasn’t lying about the taste  _ as he chokes out his hit. Sweet, unlike the other strain which had been like smoking chili powder. He will never understand why Brooke and Aiden like it so much.

“Tanner just gave this to you?” Richie knows they’re close, but this seems like something he’d have kept for himself. The dude has a weird obsession with snakes, even has a few that he bought recently from a new breeder in the city. Some guy named Carlos who brought his collection all the way from Mexico.

“Sure, let’s go with that.” Brooke shrugs, coughing as she tries to speak around the hit she had been holding since she had last handed it to him. Richie passes what he now definitely knows is a stolen bong back to her. “Don’t look a gift bong in the bowl piece okay? Just roll with it.”

_ Just roll with it. _ God, he hates when she says that, which is far more often than she should. She never thinks anything through, she just feels and acts. Sometimes he envies her for it, but not very often. Personally, he likes to sit on an idea, to form a cohesive and airtight plan before he acts. He’s willing to wait for his moment to strike, be it tomorrow or six months from now but Brooke isn’t. She’s so much like Seth in that way, they both have that jump before you look mentality. Holding them both back is tiring sometimes.

Brooke hits a button on the center console, plugging her phone into the aux cord attached to the fake tape in the ancient radio of the truck. She shoots him a pointed glance as she swipes through her phone for a song and he realizes that he’s holding the bong. He doesn’t even remember her handing it back to him. Fuck Burt and his crazy strong weed. Once he’d said that all of his shit is naturally at least 60% THC which isn’t actually possible, but sometimes Richie believes him.

The bowl is nothing but ash when he checks and he's plenty stoned already so he pours the bong out of the window, wrapping it up in the blanket they keep thrown across the back of the seat to protect it before stuffing it in the filthy backseat. Richie starts thinking of a comeback but his mind is cloudy. He hates Brooke for her insanely high tolerance, in most things really. She could drink or smoke him or almost anyone under the table and be perfectly fine the next day. It was terrifying sometimes.

_ Maybe,  _ he thinks,  _ the weeds fucking with my meds.  _ The newest psychiatrist that Eddie dragged him to thinks that he’s a schizo. The last one thought that he was autistic, or somewhere on the spectrum at least. Before that, it was bipolar disorder. Richie thinks that this doctor is just as full of shit as the last one, that he has no idea what wrong with Richie and he’s just throwing drugs at the problem like the rest of them. This time its Seroquel, which is giving him horrible mood swings but otherwise helping with the sleepwalking at least. Last time it was Abilify, which made him gain weight and stop sleeping all together so, in a way, it also helped with the sleepwalking. Before that Risperdal, which made his hands shake so badly he couldn’t even sign his own name. And those are just the ones from the last year.

Richie told Eddie that if the next pill that sounds like a Harry Potter spell that some quack shoves down his throat doesn’t work, he’s done trying and they can just lock him up for good. Eddie laughed and Richie let him but he wasn’t joking. The shed burning down hadn’t even been totally his fault and frankly, he’s a little pissed that Eddie still doesn’t believe him. More than that, he’s sick and tired of being dragged around from one musty office to the next while strangers pick at his brain only to tell him the same thing.  _ I don’t know _ .

A sudden, loud bass line blares out of the speakers, scaring him out of his quickly spiraling thoughts. Brooke laughs at him, tapping along with the beat against the steering wheel, dancing the best she can in her seat. Richie sticks his tongue out at her, squinting to make out her expression. She mimics him before turning back to the road just in time for the first line to drop.

_ Careless in our summer clothes, splashing around in the muck and the mire. _

Richie turns toward his own window, looking out at the long, dark, empty road, letting the blurry fences pass by while the music rushes over him. Brooke sings along with the words, her voice carrying down the road as the truck speeds ever forward. 

Just as Richie turns to grab her phone to pick the next song, they pass someone walking toward them on the road. Even without his glasses, Richie recognizes him almost immediately. Pete fucking Bottoms. Alone. If there was any time to strike it was now, while the wounds are still fresh and it would make a bigger statement.

“Pull over,” Richie shouts over the music, the anger underneath his skin rushing to the surface in a burning wave that makes the hair on the back of his neck stand up. “Now!”

“What are you-” Before they can get any further away he takes matters into his own hands, grabbing the wheel and pulling it toward him, forcing her to either stop the truck or drive them both straight into the miles-long fence surrounding one of the many wheat fields around town. Brooke slams on the brake, the tires squealing as they skid across the asphalt. “Are you fucking crazy?” Richie doesn’t answer, can barely even hear her over the sound of his own frantic heartbeat. The only thing on his mind is Pete and what he’s going to do once he gets his hands on the scrawny idiot.

As soon as the truck comes to a rolling stop he throws his door open and jumps out, stumbling a bit as his feet hit the dirt and he regains his equilibrium. Brooke still cussing behind him, he runs as fast as he can toward his goal, blurry as he may be Richie would recognize the little bastard anywhere.

Pete turns around just in time to see Richie close in on him. Before he can even blink, Richie catches him squarely in the chest with his shoulder and knocks him to the ground. Pete’s head bounces off of the dirt with a dull thud, a frightened shriek escaping his mouth when Richie sits on his chest, putting one of his hands over Pete’s mouth to muffle his screams. Pete fights back, sinking his teeth into the skin of Richie’s hand between his thumb and index finger.

Richie barely feels it, just pulls his hand back and slams Pete’s head back against the dirt until he lets go. He feels out of control like he’s not the one doing this. He’s just a spectator in the colosseum of his mind, forced to take the backseat and simply watch as his hands curl into fists and start to beat Pete Bottoms bloody. But somehow, he also feels _good._ Like all of the sudden, intense, burning rage inside of him is leaking out with each blow he lands. He feels like Ed Norton in Fight Club when he beats the ever-loving shit out of Jared Leto. What had he said to what he still didn’t know was just a mirrored version of himself? _I just wanted to destroy something beautiful._ But it wasn’t about that really, it was about destroying anything he could get his unsteady hands on. It wasn’t about losing control, it was about gaining it.

Richie pulls back his fist to deliver yet another blow to anywhere on Pete he can reach, but somehow he manages to get one of his arms loose. Pete throws it up to protect his face, catching Richie’s elbow accidentally just as he throws his weight forward to deliver the punch. His fist connects with the bottom of his own jaw and his teeth clack together painfully. A tiny bubble of manic laughter escapes his lips before he can choke it back down along with the blood slowly filling his mouth for the second time that night.  _ I am Jack’s smirking revenge. _

This moment has been building up for years and the pot had finally boiled over. He can either stop in his tracks and live with what little revenge he’s already taken, or he can go all the way. He can do what he should have done the first time Benny and Pete laid a hand on his brother. Put them in the fucking ground. It wouldn’t be his first time.

Brooke grabs at his shoulders, tries to pull him to his feet, but he’s too big, too furious. He throws his elbow back trying to get her off of him and gets her in the stomach. She keels over in pain and a small part of him hesitates for a second before his focus returns to Pete. Maybe he does need the pills after all, or maybe this was just a reasonable response to an unreasonable situation. Either way, it doesn’t matter because the choice has been made. He’s already here, staring down into Pete’s terrified blue eyes feeling an odd mixture of hate and relief. He imagines its not Pete, but Benny he’s hitting, that each punch is retribution for each and every terrible thing that the Bottoms have done to him and his brother over the many years.

The day after they moved to town when the Bottoms stole his and Seth’s bikes, the only things they owned besides the clothes on their backs that survived the fire that killed their dad and tossed them into the river is a solid punch to the jaw. When Eddie tried to do something about it, Papa Bottom just laughed in his face. Eddie ended up taking them to the junkyard where they spent ages digging through the garbage until they found two useable frames. After buying the parts they couldn’t salvage, he taught them how to put it all together. They both still have the bikes they built that summer. Seth’s lives in the back of the garage gathering dust, but Richie still rides his sometimes, even if he’s long since outgrown it.

The time Benny cornered Richie on his way home from school one day and made Pete help hold him down while he broke two of his fingers is him grabbing onto Pete’s own pinky and ring finger and wrenching them to the side until he hears a sickening crack. By then Eddie knew better than to try anything, no matter how badly he wanted to, so instead, he taught them how to defend themselves. The pinky and ring finger on Richie’s left hand are still slightly crooked and he can’t bend them all the way, but now both he and Seth know how to throw a punch and how to take one.

The night that Benny crashed his Dad’s car into the Missouri River and told the police that he had watched Seth steal it earlier that night is his hands wrapped around Pete’s throat. Seth spent the weekend in lockup before they would even let him talk to Eddie. In the end, there wasn’t any real evidence besides the Bottom’s word, so the charges were dropped but now Seth’s name is in a database somewhere, his fingerprints in the system. The moment Eddie came home dragging Seth still reeking of Juvie behind him, he sat them both down at the kitchen table and gave them their first official ‘gentleman lesson’ as they eventually started calling them. Every Saturday morning to this day he sits them down at the same table and tries his damndest to make their lives even the tiniest bit easier.

Richie doesn’t know how long he knelt over Pete pummeling him senseless. His list of offenses is endless and if left to his own devices Richie might have sat there all night delivering Pete what he has been owed since the day they met but at some point, Brooke managed to get her arm around his neck and one of her legs around his waist, holding him hard enough that he had to stop to free himself. When he does, Pete scrambles out from underneath him, scampering away into the treeline. When Pete is fully out of sight, Brooke lets go and steps back.

For a long moment, they simply stand and stare at each other. He can’t read her expression and he doesn’t like that. Normally she’s an open book, or at least as open as she can be. But right now she’s shut up tighter than Eddie's booze cabinet when he leaves town.

Brooke breaks first, turning on her heel and walking over to the passenger side of the truck where the door is still propped open, the radio hissing static the only sound in the still night air. Richie follows her on unsteady legs, his earlier rush of adrenaline filtering out of his system now that the subject of his rage is now cowering in the woods.

Looking down at his shaking hands as Brooke uses what little water is still left in her hydro flask to rinse the blood off of his split knuckles, he braces himself for the inevitable moment that she asks what the hell is wrong with him. Which he doesn’t exactly know the answer to, not right now at least. The only thing he’s really thinking is that maybe he does need his meds after all.

Instead of blowing up as he expects, she just sighs softly, ripping off a length of her shirt, using it to gently wrap around his wounded knuckles. “Maybe I’m losing it,” She starts but he’s not really listening, he’s too focused on her shirt. It used to be his before she stole it off of him one night and never gave it back, or he’s pretty sure that’s what happened. He’s still not completely clear on how exactly she got it now that he really thinks about it, but he doesn’t feel up to the argument that is bound to happen if he brings it up right now so he lets it go. “But I coulda swore that I heard you say something earlier about how killing the Bottoms is a bad idea.”

“I said that  _ you _ killing the Bottoms was a bad idea.” Richie tries to keep his voice even but his words come out as shaky as he feels. “I mean, I appreciate the thought and all but, no offense, you’d have to be dumber than I thought if you really didn’t think that I was going to do something about it myself at some point.” He hears it as soon as he says it.  _ Dumber than I thought _ . Fuck, hes dumber than he thought.

“You know what they say,” Brooke says nonchalantly, pulling on the ends of his makeshift bandage harder than she needs to as she finishes tying it off. Richie winces in pain but doesn’t say anything, knowing full well that she’s letting him off easy. She pushes away from him and climbs back into the truck, starting the engine before he can even turn around. “It's the count that thoughts.”

-

“So what are you gonna tell Seth?” Brooke asks, breaking the mostly comfortable silence that had fallen between them on the drive back to Eddie’s house. He lets out a breath he hadn’t realized that he had been holding when she speaks, some of the tension in his shoulders easing. Neither of them are the kind of people who talk about stuff like feelings or whatever, they just let it sit between them and rot until eventually one of them can’t take it anymore and they blow up. He hates it but it’s just the way things are and he’s not gonna be the one to change things.

“I pissed you off really, really bad?” Brooke rolls her eyes at him, plucking the cigarette out of his hand when he offers it to her so he can dig through the messy backseat for his backpack. “Or I fell down the stairs on my way to take a piss in the middle of the night.”

“That one he might believe.” Finally, he finds his bag stuffed between the back of his seat and the rear door underneath a pillow that had fallen on top of it at some point in the night. He settles back in his seat, double-checking that he still has everything, reminding himself all the while to ask her to clean up the truck tomorrow since it was all of her clothes and other junk littering the backseat. Sometimes there was so much stuff it felt like she was living in the truck, which, now that he thinks about it isn’t actually that unreasonable. “Especially since you have all the grace of a newborn deer when you’re tired.” Brooke hands him the cigarette back when he’s done checking every pocket of his backpack. He takes it from her quickly, not even bothering to take the last hit off of it before grinding the butt out into the ashtray built into the door of the truck. 

“Eddie’s stairs are a safety hazard and you know it.” Brooke raises an eyebrow at him but doesn’t say anything else on the matter so he continues, trying for honest this time. “I’m gonna tell him the truth. He’s gonna find out anyway so there’s no point in lying.”

Brooke laughs, or at least he thinks that what the sound is. She doesn’t turn to look at him, just keeps staring out of the windshield with her hands clutching the steering wheel so tightly her knuckles are white. “That hasn’t stopped you before.” She says eventually, more whispers really, like the words hurt her to say.

Richie wants to ask her what that’s supposed to mean, though deep down he knows. But he also knows that now isn’t the time to get into it, not when his nose still throbs almost as painfully as the rest of him and the only thing he can taste is the copper tinge of blood.

He chances another glance at her before he steps out of the truck but she’s still not looking at him. Instead, she’s staring down at her phone, tilting it just enough that he can only see the light reflecting off of the screen. “You know,” He says before he really thinks it through, knowing that if he doesn’t correct her its likely to nag at him all night. “The saying is actually its the thought that counts, not-”

“Get out of my car.”

A smarter person would backpedal and attempt to salvage the conversation. A better person would apologize in general, for not only this but also the other things that happened tonight. Like earlier when he accidentally elbowed her in the stomach when she tried to stop him from throttling Pete to death. Or when he called her dumb while she cleaned another person’s blood off of his hands and tore up her clothes to make him a bandage. Or any number of other nameless things that he most likely did tonight, and in the past, to hurt her without even knowing it. But he’s too tired and in too much pain to attempt to be either of these things. Instead, he stands his ground. At that moment the only thing he wants is to get his point across. He doesn’t even care if she ends up rebreaking his nose. “Last time I checked this is a  _ truck _ , not a  _ car.  _ There’s a big difference. And more than that, it’s my car. I paid for the parts and spent the time fixing it up so I would appreciate it if you showed me a little respect-.”

“You’re so fucking stupid, like, sometimes I genuinely don’t understand how you survived infancy stupid. If I look into your eyes too long the only thing I’ll see is the fucking tornado from the Wizard of Oz fly by, cows and all, stupid-” Brooke cuts herself off, waving a hand in the air in front of her face and taking a deep breath to collect herself before turning slowly to look at him. The second her eyes land on him he regrets saying anything. He should have just let her have the last word, he should have kept his mouth shut, but then again, he’s never really quite learned how to do that when it really matters. It’s not that he’s stupid, its that most times he doesn’t even know what he’s said is wrong until someone calls him out on it. To him, it’s not wrong, it’s the truth and it’s harder than they seem to think it is to tell the difference sometimes. But even when he knows they’re wrong, the words still tend to just slip out. Seth calls it  _ foot in mouth disease  _ and Richies got a bad case of it. “I love you, like so much that it makes me act just as stupid, which is why I need you to get out of my sight right now before I- I don’t fucking know what I’m going to do but its not good.”

If it was any other night, if he wasn’t pretty sure that his nose is broken and at least a couple of his ribs bruised, if only he could stop the ringing in his ears. A dozen excuses as to why he listens to her without question spring to his mind as he slips silently out of the truck and watches her speed away. In the end, he settles on how tired he is as the main reason.

Richie tries to sneak through the house and to his room but the stairs give him away, creaking underneath his weight even after he skips the broken one near the bottom. Seth comes running out of his room, skidding across the half-finished wood floor in his dirty, mismatched socks. He takes one look at Richie before he rushes him, crowding his space and speaking in a rushed tone that Richie struggles to keep up with. “Dude, what the hell happened to your face?”

“Would you believe me if I said ‘an extremely localized tornado’?” Richie jokes, trying to lighten the mood but Seth doesn’t budge, just stares up at him with dark, stormy eyes, his brow furrowed in concentration. Richie knows that look and usually, he likes it because it means that Seth’s thinking of ways to hurt the Bottom’s but right now it just makes his knuckles hurt all over again. There’s no point in planning how to retaliate against them because Richie’s already played their next hand, but Seth doesn’t know that yet. There would be time for that in the morning after they’ve all had some sleep.

For now, he lets Seth drag him to the bathroom to start redressing his wounds with actual bandages. Seth sits on the edge of the sink while Richie showers the night off of him, cursing up a storm as he spouts off the many reasons that he hates both this shit hole town and the Bottoms, all things Richie has heard thousands of times over, but he still listens.

That night he falls asleep listening to his brother list off the different ways he would kill Benny and Pete Bottom if ever given the privilege. Most of them are impractical, but a few could work with a few adjustments. Richie files them away to bring up again in the morning, just to see what Seth says.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> still not entirely sure where i'm going with this except that the next chapter is going to be mostly burt centric.

**Author's Note:**

> to think, this all started because i found an instagram template on tumblr... anyway, this is going to be a series of oneshots based on different insta posts. feel free to send requests. just pick out something from my [board](https://www.pinterest.com/amazingbanananas/au-the-epic-highs-and-lows-of-high-school/) and send me a message on my [tumblr](https://thewizardofloneliness.tumblr.com/) and i'll do my best. also, there are going to be a couple of original characters in this and a lot of it is going to be ooc since they're, ya know, teenagers growing up in a different time (or at least some of them are)


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